Climate Change and Underwater Cultural Heritage: The Case Study of Emma Wreck in Argentina

One of the main objectives of the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019 TECTONIC project is the development of a tool to supportmanagers and decision makers for the risk assessment of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) in a changing environment. The completion of this tool foresees a series of activities to be implemented at three pilot sites including the Emma wreck, located in the Nuevo Gulf, Chubut Province, Argentina.We here present an overview of the current environmental conditions of the site and discuss what is expected in the future according to climate projections, focusing mainly on those parameters which could have a priority on the deterioration processes of the site. To this end, we identified the environmental variables that should be considered for the development of a tool to decision makers for the safeguarding of UCH. In addition, we evaluate how the state-of-the-art climate models represent the current climate conditions by investigating the available datasets to better evaluate the future climate projections in the area where Emma pilot site is located. The present work is necessary to constrain the climate models to include in the “Risk Mapping Tool for Cultural Heritage Protection”, an online tool geared towards policy and decision makers in support of the identification of risk areas and vulnerabilities for cultural heritage exposed to climate change